Open AccessTransmission grating stretcher for contrast enhancement of high power lasers
Author(s) -
Y. Tang,
C. J. Hooker,
O. Chekhlov,
S. Hawkes,
John Collier,
P. P. Rajeev
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.22.029363
Subject(s) - grating , optics , materials science , pedestal , blazed grating , laser , transmission (telecommunications) , diffraction grating , optoelectronics , physics , telecommunications , computer science , archaeology , history
We propose, for the first time, a transmission grating stretcher for high power lasers and demonstrate its superiority over conventional, reflective gold grating stretchers in terms of pulse temporal quality. We show that, compared to a conventional stretcher with the same stretching factor, the transmission-grating based stretcher yields more than an order of magnitude improvement in the contrast pedestal. We have also quantitatively characterized the roughness of the grating surfaces and estimated its impact on the contrast pedestal.